Choices, choices
by Kagami Sorciere
Summary: Sarah is victim in a gruesome accident. Immobile, her life on a thread, an old acquaintance won't give her peace. As she lies battered and dying in the hospital, he pushes her to make a choice, but is what he's proposing the only way for her to survive?
1. Emergency

The ambulance's siren wailed as a bloody and malformed body was quickly hoisted up and onto the hastily deployed gurney. Wrapped up and prodded and strapped into the contraption, the bundle was folded back into the vehicle as it made a mad dash for the nearest hospital.

The body wanted to curl into itself. It was instinct, strapped to the portable bed. Lights, sounds, voices- it could focus on none of it. What was its name? Is there next of kin the emergency workers could contact? Please lay still so they can check your vital signs….

_Sarah._

The badly damaged body's eyes flicked open. It was like being in a crowded room, hearing nothing but the noise, but when that one person calls your name from the other end, every word they speak is crystal clear.

He sat there, demure, at the end of the ambulance bench. Her eyes met his at the sound of her name, yes, she, Sarah, so, so badly broken in this accident….

His expression was blank as he gazed at her. She was unrecognizable, but there was no way for her to know that. The emergency medical staff took advantage of what they perceived was awakening and understanding of her situation and the harried questions began again. Can she see them? Can she speak? Does she know what's happened tonight? Each and every word from their mouths was like a merry-go-round, spinning in a thick haze. Her mind was swimming, her head was physically buzzing, and then her hearing began to dampen. He still sat there, motionless, as the emergency workers merely seemed to work around him as he did nothing but stare like a statue at their critically deteriorating patient. He was as clear as a voice calling her name from across that proverbial crowded room, and her bloodied fingers struggled to reach out to him in spite of the immoveable restraints.

"Ja….reth."

The emergency workers stopped. "Jared?" one asked. "Is that a relative? Boyfriend?" They struggled for clues. She relaxed suddenly and exhaled, eyes falling shut as she convulsed. The ambulance staff were scrambling again. "She's out! Going into shock! Quick- 5mg of ativan! Now! Stay with us, sweetheart. We're almost there. Stay with us….."

〜≠〜

Sarah awoke to the gentle electronic beeping of her own heart on the EKG meter. Only her eyelids moved, and even then the light seemed to drill itself into her eyes as she tried to move her head. It was impossible. Her neck had been encased in a brace. As she raised her arm to feel at the brace, she was thwarted once again, this time by a cast. Her entire body was encased. Only, she found, her lips could move, but even that was painful. Her bottom lip was swollen and tasted of copper. It was a nightmare. She began to moan but it turned into a scream, and soon a swarm of nurses were in her room, pumping her full of more pain killers and ativan.

"You have to stay still, dear. You were in a very bad accident. Do you remember any of it?"

The nurse didn't give her a chance to reply.

"Most of you is in very bad shape, dear. I know this is hard to understand right now, but you have to stay still. We're trying to contact your family. Your name is Sarah, right? Sarah Williams?"

Sarah let out a sharp breath as the medicine began to kick in. "Yes. Want….to sit up," she croaked.

The nurse shook her head and sighed. "I'm afraid not, dear. The doctors are still taking a look at your injuries so we can't have you sitting upright just yet. Can you understand?"

Sarah let out a whimper in her restrained state as her eyes began to water. The rest of the nurses, seeing the patient back within safe levels, filed out of the room while the one who had been talking stayed behind. She took a tissue from the night stand right next to Sarah's bed, the one so close she still could not reach, and delicately dabbed Sarah's eyes, absorbing the liquid.

"I know it's difficult, dear, but you're stable for now. Try not to worry or cry too much. The salt from your tears will only aggravate the small cuts on your face and you won't be able to wipe them away like this. Will you be alright?"

The nurse put the tissue into the trash and began straightening up Sarah's covers, not waiting for her to answer. She took down a small button on a wire and placed it just at Sarah's fingertips.

"You just push that if you need anything. No false alarms, though, ok? I'll be just out here at the nurse's station."

The nurse turned and slid open the door to leave, closing it again behind her.

Sarah was in a haze. The drugs were definitely beginning to work. Her panic was slowly being forced to subside by the cocktail as she stared at the ceiling and sighed repeatedly. It was silent, save for the bleed-through of the bustle going on in the ER outside of her door. What was seconds in reality felt like handfuls of minutes in her drug induced stupor. She tried to fight it, reconstruct what had happened. She saw herself getting into the car. It was late. Where was she going? She didn't remember. But she drove, and that truck….

Sarah let out a whimper. She wouldn't, couldn't, remember any further. Against her will her eyes once again filled with water and threatened to overflow down her scraped and sliced face. She felt something, a barely something, dabbing gently at the corner of her eye, absorbing the liquid before it could cause her further harm. She tried to turn her head before being reminded once again that she could not when his face swam into view without any effort.

"Sarah," he said aloud.

Her eyes locked on to him as he seemed to float around in front of her due to the medication. "You…"

"Sarah, look at you," he continued, reaching his hand carefully over to the other side of her face to absorb the salty tears from her other eye before they fell. "You're a mess. How could you let this happen?"

He frowned slightly down at her before pulling his arm back. She merely stared blankly up at him. "It wasn't me," she replied hoarsely. "It wasn't me, a-a-a truck, it…." Sarah sucked in another gasp of air again before feeling the drugs stem the tide of panic.

"Trucks do not cut up attractive young ladies and turn them into their own brand of hobgoblin. You, my dear Sarah, are a mess."

He stood up from his seat at her bedside and began to slowly pace. Sarah watched him intently, every movement he made reeling her mind under the sheen of all the drugs as if she were drunk before he stopped and turned at the foot of her bed.

"The question is, however….what are you going to do about it?" He stared her in the eye for a long while as he fell into silence. His eyes began to wander over the cuts and massive bruising covering her tortured flesh that wasn't already encased in cast or brace and his face grew serious with the distraction.

"Jareth," she whispered. His eyes snapped back to hers.

"What will you do?" he repeated.

The door to her room opened and Sarah's eyes flicked to the nurse from before leading her shock-ridden father into her hospital room. "Visitors, dear. Your father's here to see you."

The nurse pulled out a nearby chair for her father to sit in before leaving and closing the door behind her. "Sweetheart…"

"Daddy."

Her eyes glanced back to the foot of her bed, but the Goblin King was gone.

* * *

><p>Thanks for reading! A short introductory sort of chapter. Please leave a review and let me know what you think! ~Thanks<p> 


	2. The first day of the end of your life

Sarah's father sat uncomfortably in the chair that had been set out for him as he looked long and drawn at his broken daughter.

"Oh, sweetheart…."

He sniffed cautiously, attempting to stifle the flood of emotions bearing down on him as he gingerly raised his hand to rest his fingers upon his daughter's.

"They said….they said that you probably wouldn't be able to talk very much. They've only given me five minutes. They won't let me stay since this is ICU."

He looked down and delicately stroked her hand in his. Sarah weakly pressed her lips together as she furrowed her brow and attempted to squeeze his fingers in some sign of comfort.

"Dad…."

"What is it honey?"

"How bad is it?" she asked quietly. "I…they won't raise my bed so I can't see."

Her father sighed and leaned back some in his chair as he looked briefly around the room before looking back at his daughter.

"Oh Sarah, I'm not going to lie to you. I know you hate it when you think I do," he said, smiling slightly. "But you're in pretty bad shape, darling. The doctors don't quite know the extent of it yet."

Sarah tried to nod but was once again thwarted by her neck brace which was quickly raising her stress levels even further due to frustration.

"When do you think they will know?" she asked.

"I'm not sure. Tonight? Probably tomorrow. The nurses said you were stable for now, so that's a good thing. You've got a lot of broken bones, but bones can heal, right?" he said with a wry smile. Sarah couldn't help but smile back.

"Yeah," she replied. Her father squeezed her fingers gently again as the nurse slid the door open.

"I'm sorry, but time's up for now. Mr. Williams, you can visit your daughter again tomorrow afternoon if you like."

"Tomorrow afternoon?" Sarah said in a panic.

Her father looked back and forth from the nurse to his little girl and gave Sarah a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, honey. I'll be there, and I'll be there early. Alright?" He rose to his feet and looked down at her. Hesitating, he slowly bent over and kissed her gingerly on the forehead.

"See you soon," he said softly.

The nurse held the sliding door open for him as he nodded to her and departed. Sarah was beside herself. The tears began to well up again and quickly, with no one there to catch them. The salt fell into some of the more smaller scratches on her face and Sarah hissed to herself as she attempted to choke back the tears. The nurse stepped into the room and looked down at Sarah pitifully and pulled another tissue from the tissue box and began to dab Sarah's face.

"I know it's hard, dear, seeing family after something like this. It's late, though. How about you get some sleep? I'll be right back and bring you something to help you rest, alright?" The nurse disposed of the tissue and left the room, leaving Sarah all alone again.

She sighed and resumed staring at the ceiling. She couldn't think of anything. Her mind kept drawing blanks. What could she do? There was nothing she could do- not like this. She couldn't even move. Couldn't even wipe away her own tears. She'd had to rely on the nurse and…Jareth.

Her eyes began searching the room. Sitting inconspicuously in the corner of the room in a far removed chair was the Goblin King himself, arms folded, and watching Sarah intently.

"You're back," she said, straining her eyes to see far enough in his direction.

"I never left," he said, nonchalantly.

"But my father…he didn't see you."

"He wasn't looking for me, was he? He was looking for you."

Sarah sighed and glanced around the room in an attempt to quell her tears. Jareth leaned back in the metal hospital chair and narrowed his eyes. Sarah sighed again and did her best to get a good look at him but the best she could see was from the shoulders up in her restrained position.

"What?" Sarah asked, put off by his expression.

"She's coming back."

"Huh?" Sarah replied, confused, as the nurse suddenly slid the door open again and noisily set a small glass jar atop Sarah's bedside table.

"Here we are, dear," the nurse said. "Something to help you sleep."

Sarah started to breath heavily as she looked back at the corner of the room and saw Jareth still sitting there with the same expression. He hadn't vanished, and the nurse took no notice of him at all.

"No…no I don't want it, thank you," she said in a mild panic, fighting the drugs already in her system.

"I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice, my dear. You need rest, and this will be the only way for awhile."

"No, I can sleep on my own, I promise. Really!"

"Now, now dear," the nurse cooed, sticking a syringe in the top of the glass jar. She filled the small shot to capacity and began injecting it into Sarah's I.V. bag.

"No, please, really…" Sarah pleaded. The effects of the drug were almost instantaneous and her head began to veritably swim as her vision blurred. "Jareth, please, don't let them do this to me, please…" she tried to say, but her speech came out slurred.

"There, there, dear. Sleep well, alright? Lots of tests in the morning," the nurse said cheerfully. She placed the spent needle in the appropriate receptacle and turned off the lights, closing the door behind her. Sarah was left in almost perfect darkness save for the few shafts of light filtering in through the spaces between the blinds.

Her eyelids finally became too heavy to keep open, and despite fighting it, she slipped easily into unconsciousness. A shadowy figure got up from his seat, passed the foot of her bed, slid open the door, and left.

Sarah awoke to the lights already on and a nurse in blue scrubs checking her charts. She felt groggy and drugged and not entirely sure of where she was. When she tried to roll over, thinking she'd check her alarm clock, she found she couldn't, and was rudely reminded that most of her body was in a cast and sighed. The nurse saw her move and smiled.

"Good morning, Miss Williams! How are you feeling this morning?"

Sarah mumbled in reply.

"Still a little drowsy from the sleep meds? It'll take a little while to wear off completely. You've got a pretty busy day today. Some tests, x-rays, and a couple of examinations to do before the doctors can give you a full diagnosis. When you arrived last night, we were only able to address your initial injuries and get you stable. Today's the day for the grunt work, I'm afraid," the nurse grinned. She flipped through a few more pages of Sarah's chart, made a note on one page, and hung it back on the foot of the hospital bed.

"Breakfast?" Sarah managed to croak out in reply. The nurse laughed.

"Are you hungry? I'll be sure to check your I.V. to make sure everything's working properly, otherwise you don't need any food."

Sarah's eyes widened as she tried to glance at the fluids bag that had to be needled into her body somewhere but couldn't look that far. The nurse ducked briefly out of Sarah's sight and began checking the instruments at her bedside.

"I'll tone down some of the other medications they put you on last night. If you start to feel any serious pain or stress, however, just buzz us and we'll come to help," she said as she adjusted a couple of plastic sliders. "There. That'll help you to chipper up a little more soon. We'll come to get you in a few minutes for the first round of exams, so I'll leave you for a little while to wake up some more before it begins, ok?"

The nurse smiled to Sarah as she slid open the door and left. As the drugs began to dissipate gradually, she found she could hold thoughts again. She thought about how many tiles were on the ceiling, and about the new batch of nurses at the nurses' station just outside her door. She thought about the sick and injured people being rushed up and down the hall, just as she had probably been, but never once did she think about the accident itself. About ten minutes later, the nurse returned with two of her more buff colleagues and she was wheeled down the hall and onto the elevator.

Her first stop was for a full body CAT scan. Unbeknownst to her, all of her new encasements were either entirely plaster or plastic, no metal screws and latches required. It wasn't hard lying still for the machine. It was all she could do. Afterwards she was wheeled into a room, still lying down, and examined by doctor after doctor. They examined her external injuries, her eyes, her ears, her lungs, they tried to examine her muscular and skeletal damage but it was difficult with the casts. Sarah lost track of what was going on after the fourth doctor. Eventually she blocked the entire process out and found her mind floating away, answering questions by reflex, and off to somewhere else entirely. At some point it occurred to her that she was late for work, but later dismissed the worry as impossible to be concerned over. She remembered that tomorrow was the day to pay all of her utility bills, and that the fish needed to be fed. Sarah sighed. Her father would take care of that for her, she supposed.

"Everything alright, Miss Williams? I'm not hurting you, am I?" the latest doctor asked.

"Oh, no," she replied. "Sorry, I've lost count of the doctors I've seen today," she said half-heartedly. "I suppose I zoned out for a bit."

The doctor frowned. "Zoned out? Hmmm…" He stood up, and one by one shined a small flashlight into each of Sarah's eyes to check her pupils, and did it twice. "Well, I'll have to put that in my notes, Miss Williams. Sorry to say, but in your condition, every detail must be accounted for. I'm done here. I'll call the nurse to take you back to your room now."

Sarah gave the doctor an obligatory 'thank you' as he left the room and she waited to be taken away again, hearing the door click shut behind him.

"So what do you think they're going to find, dear Sarah?"

Sarah jumped at the sudden voice at her ear, causing a ripple of pain to shoot through her body at the reflexive jolt. She heard something behind her step to the other side of the bed, still out of sight.

"Will they find everything to be roses and sunshine? Just a few cuts and bruises and a handful of broken bones?" he said again, this time at her other ear.

"Stop it. Why are you doing this? Come out where I can see you," Sarah said, frustrated. There was a pause, and Jareth stepped out from behind Sarah's hospital bed slowly, arms crossed in front of him as he glared at Sarah from the corner of his eye.

"Why are you doing this? Why of all times are you here now? I didn't call you. You're-you're not even supposed to be real!" Sarah's voice cracked.

The Goblin King's eyes widened in feral disbelief. "Not real? Not _real_? And did you simply conjure up these injuries up as well?" he said in a raised voice and poked Sarah hard on her exposed foot. She tried to cringe.

"No, stop!" she cried, trying to master the pain without breathing too hard.

"So if I'm not real, _girl_, then neither is what those doctors of yours are discussing this very moment," he snapped.

Sarah's eyes widened as she tried desperately to get comfortable again.

"Yes, I can see you sense it," he said, and held out both his hands palm up in front of him. "Will it be good?" he said, raising up one palm, "Or will it be bad?" he said again, lowering another.

"I want you…to go," Sarah said, struggling. "I didn't call you here. You've no business here. You need to go."

Jareth stood still for a moment, as if slightly thrown off, before regaining his composure again.

"Let me tell you one thing, dearest Sarah, just one thing," he continued, wagging his finger at her briefly before placing his arms on either side of her bed rails. He paused and looked her dead in the eye. Sarah was too tired to be afraid or have any more response. She merely looked at him in silence.

"No, you didn't call me here, at least not in any way that you're aware of, but _there may come a time_….." he said emphatically, pausing. "There may come a time when you _will _ desire to call me by name, and when that time comes…" he said, leaning back away from her bed. He smiled smugly as he crossed his arms over his chest once more and looked down at her bemusedly. Sarah looked up at him and tried to laugh but only ended up coughing for several long seconds.

"You'll what?" she said, gaining control of her coughing. "You'll pester me until I do? Hang around and gloat superiorly thinking it has any effect? You're making me laugh, and laugh with broken ribs no less," she chuckled half heartedly.

"Oh, on the contrary. You won't need any 'pestering' from me, as you put it," Jareth said through a tight smile.

"And why is that? I'm not 14 anymore, you know. Whatever childish prank you're thinking of pulling won't work on me."

Jareth's eyes grew serious and his face cold as he looked at Sarah. "No, you're not," he replied, in a voice that Sarah noted was a drastic contrast from the one he'd been using up till now. She stared back at him in silence, half waiting for him to continue when the door to her exam room opened and a new nurse with new grunts walked in and began to wheel her out of the room, never noticing the man who stood off to the side, glowering.

Sarah was taken to a new room she'd never been in before in a calmer part of the hospital. When she arrived, her father and step-mother were both there. It should've made her happy, but something about this gathering seemed to usher in an air of foreboding for Sarah. Her father immediately took a seat next to her once she had been settled in by the nurses and Karen took to standing concerned yet nervous at the foot of her bed trying not to pace. As the nurses began to file out, a doctor who didn't look much older than 30 stepped into her new room and began shaking hands before taking hold of a clip board he'd brought in with him and started flipping through the pages.

"Glad to see you with company, Miss Williams. It's good to have support at moments like these. We've gotten the test results back, and-"

"Please, doctor," her father interrupted. "Just cut to the chase. We've all been through so much, especially Sarah. Just tell us- is she going to be ok?"

The doctor looked up at him and quietly cleared his throat before flipping to another page on his clipboard and examining it carefully.

"Well, the thing is, Mr. and Mrs. Williams, that I and the other doctors who have examined Sarah today are somewhat in disagreement about the results. I suppose you could say that our findings are at the moment inconclusive," the doctor said, scratching the side of his face with his pen.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sarah asked, concerned, as she struggled to look farther forward. As she did so, she caught a glimpse of familiar, serious eyes watching her from the other side of the window looking into her room. She stared into them for a moment before shifting her attention back to the doctor who watched her and raised his eyebrows before moving to raise the back of Sarah's bed up just slightly so that she could see things better.

"Thank you so much for that," she said, focusing back on her surroundings. "I asked the nurses earlier to raise me up but they wouldn't do it."

The doctor nodded. "Yes, they were worried about spinal damage, and rightly so. For now, from what we've found, you should be alright as long as you're only propped up this high."

Sarah nodded to the doctor who nodded back and went back to his notes. Sara glanced back out her window and did her best to ignore the man on the other side.

"As I was saying," the doctor continued. Sarah's eyes snapped back to the physician. "We are not exactly in agreement over the extent of Miss Williams's injuries. For the most part, the examinations and diagnoses made on the night she came in are still the same, however, in order to placate one of the doctors who had some concerns over some dizziness and lack of focus that she seems to be having, we're ordering a full CT scan first thing tomorrow morning, just to make sure there's no serious brain damage. Miss Williams sustained a concussion in the car accident which would account for the disorientation but this doctor still has some concerns so we're going to check it out just to be safe."

Sarah's father turned to her with a look of deep concern and nodded comfortingly. Sarah sighed and looked up at him and then at the doctor, wanting to ask questions but not knowing where to start.

"What time will the CT scan be, doctor?" she asked instead.

"We've got you down for the first slot in the morning, so it'll be at about 7:30am. We'll give you something to help you sleep once you're finished visiting with your parents so you'll be fresh for tomorrow."

The doctor made a few notes on Sarah's chart, scribed a few notes on his own clipboard, and nodded to Sarah and her family before departing.

"Where's Toby?" she asked.

"Oh," Karen began hesitatingly. "Well, you know, he's still a kid. We wanted to come see how you were doing first before we brought him over, you know?" Her step-mother tried to smile reassuringly to Sarah.

"You mean I'm so mangled that you don't want Toby to have nightmares for weeks after seeing me, right?" Sarah grinned and tried to laugh.

"Never, sweetheart," her father broke in. "He's your brother. He's family, and he loves you. We just don't want to overwhelm you with small children just yet."

Sarah smiled and nodded, squeezing his hand with her free fingers.

"Sorry we're only seeing you now, dear," Karen said. "We've actually been here for hours but they kept you so long for tests that we didn't get to see you until now."

"That's alright," Sarah said. "Do you have to go?"

"No, no, we've got a little bit of time," her father said, smiling.

They talked for about 20 minutes before a nurse wielding an additional I.V. bag stepped into her room and began making the preparations to help Sarah to sleep.

"Not as strong as what they gave you last night, Miss Williams, but I hope you're a little more acclimated now."

Sarah said nothing but continued to look at her father as he smiled down at her. At the urging of the nurse, they soon had to say goodbye, and after they left, Sarah and the nurse were left alone. She hung the bag alongside Sarah's main one and began making the appropriate adjustments.

"There you go, Miss Williams. You should be able to fall asleep more naturally tonight. This will just give you a little push," she said with a smile. "If you need anything, just give us a buzz."

Sarah smiled and nodded to the nurse as she left and yawned to herself. She let out a deep sigh, and as her eyes swept back across the room, she happened upon Jareth who had seated himself down and was flipping dispassionately through a random magazine that had been left on the seat. Sarah felt the great urge to cock her head to the side, if she even could.

"So is this it?" Sarah said quietly. Jareth continued to turn pages. "You're just going to stalk me through the hospital until I call on you? And for what? To save me? All this will heal."

Jareth paused mid page-turn and stared down at the magazine. He sighed silently and closed it, placing it down on his lap without raising his eyes. "You seem so certain, Sarah," he said, amicably, looking up.

Sarah smiled emptily at him. "Because I am. This is a hospital. This is where they heal people. Where _human people_ are healed- so why don't you tell me what you really want, hmm?" Sarah's voice became gradually louder as she delicately arched her brow. Jareth dropped the magazine to the floor and rose to his feet as he approached the foot of Sarah's hospital bed.

"Are you really that dim? Or do you just remember nothing of our little encounter nearly 12 years ago?" he said, crossing his arms once more, which was quickly annoying Sarah. She looked up at him defiantly with a questioning expression.

"The hands on the clock I presented you with held how many hours? Thirteen, did it not?" Jareth replied as he stepped slowly away from her bed. He stopped short of the door and paused, looking at Sarah's eyes with his mismatched ones. Sarah's composure wavered slightly and prayed he didn't sense it. The slow drip the nurse had added was beginning to disrupt her thoughts as she fought back a yawn. "So?" she prompted slowly. His gaze stayed steady upon hers. "There are only 26 hours in a day, Sarah."

Sarah frowned and looked away confused as Jareth turned back towards the door and slowly turned the nob to leave. Sarah's frown deepend, and as he opened the door wider, Sarah gasped. "What day is it?" Jareth paused in place as she struggled to try and look at him from her ridged position. "Today. What day is it today?" Sarah sighed in exasperation over her lack of mobility, even risking pain to try and shift herself as Jareth turned his face to the side without looking at her. "It is September 25th, two days…." Jareth paused and looked up for a moment, as if in waiting, before lowering his head again. "One day, now, before your 26th birthday."

Sarah let out a heavy breath, and then another, and another, as Jareth stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him.

* * *

><p><strong>Thanks for sticking it out to chapter 2, guys! This chapter was REALLY hard for me to write, which might be apparent in the styling. It took me multiple days to write, which isn't how I do things. Please let me know how you think it went, but please also know that there's only one more chapter of setup after this and then we're off and running! So, please bear with me as the setup continues. I also want to give a special thank you to jinx1764 for volunteering to be my on-set medical adviser and making sure I get things vaguely right medically, haha. Thanks again, and see you all at chapter three!<strong> -KS xo (don't forget to review!)


	3. Eden Denied

As Sarah gasped for air, she watched Jareth depart. He never looked back. Her gasps became distorted as she strained against her braces and casts, the Goblin King slipping from view, as if by magic, and she began to slip from consciousness.

Was it from too much oxygen to the brain or too much panic? She didn't know. As the blackness covered over her eyes, she felt nothing. In the dark, she was free. She seemed to spread herself out and swim through oblivion like she would a great ocean. Sarah was carefree. Did she _ever_ really have any problems? Wasn't there _only_ ever the blackness? The bliss was short-lived as Sarah felt an odd tug at her chest and suddenly her weight was returned to her.

She cracked an eye and was greeted to a face-full of bright lights and several faces overhead. She remembered this- like the night of the accident, wasn't it? Ah, but this was happening right now, she told herself. They wore masks and were speaking frantically to her, trying to get her to acknowledge them, but she couldn't hear them. She didn't really want to hear them. She wanted to go back to the dark where she could move around and think of nothing, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't seem to go back. One of the masked people hovering over her placed a contraption over her nose and mouth, and soon she was immersed in another kind of darkness.

Sarah dreamed. The darkness in front of her swirled and shifted, much different from before, and splashes of color sprang up here and there. Sarah felt herself reaching out to touch them, perhaps even to mould them into something whimsical and interesting, but she felt something fighting her, and soon the colors moved on their own to create a grassy courtyard on a high hill overlooking a packed and bustling city below. She turned and began to walk curiously to the edge of the field to better inspect the small houses far beneath her. The grass stopped at a neat cliff that dropped sharply down and was penned in by a twisted, wrought-iron fence that rose to just above Sarah's head into sharp spikes. Sarah gripped the bars of the fence and looked down below and spotted what appeared to be a town square, bustling with life, with small beings moving here and there as they ran errands and conducted business. Her eyes shifted to look upon their small houses that seemed to follow the theme of the fence she leaned against, their A-frame roofs topped with daunting spikes whilst the houses themselves seemed so unkempt and faded. She frowned, and, looking a bit farther, found her breath catch in her throat. A large and elaborate labyrinth enclosed the drab and dreary city and seemed to spread for miles. Sarah found herself unable to breathe. Her hands tightened around the bars of the fence, her knuckles showing white, as her body tensed and her mind raced. Eventually, she found she could no longer hold the breath and slumped her forehead against the bars, feeling as if they were imprisoning her with her memories of the place, of how she abandoned her brother and nearly killed both of them for her foolishness. Sarah slumped more and her hands grew slack, falling to her sides as she slowly turned around and saw him standing on the other side of the courtyard. She wasn't surprised- what was the Goblin City without its King? Unlike the all-consuming blackness before, she wished she could actually escape from _this _ dream. She smirked slightly, wearily, and stood to her full height as she took a couple of slow steps towards him.

As she got closer, she could feel his eyes upon her and looked up. He was indeed staring, but staring coldly. His arms were crossed in front of him in a severe posture, his mouth firmly set. He was like a statue in his own garden- unmoving, stony in the otherwise lush environment. Sarah found it unsettling and dropped her eyes away from him and noticed rows of red roses lining the low wall that bordered the other half of the courtyard. She didn't know why, but she found the roses peculiar, and it wasn't just because their color was so incredibly intense and vivid, but as she got closer, she noticed their petals seemed to move. As she approached the Goblin King, it became clear- the roses were bleeding. Blood rolled off of the petals in heady drops and fell to the ground, instantly absorbed into the soil and undoubtedly into their roots. Were they carnivorous or cannibals? Sarah was fascinated and disturbed all at once before suddenly stopping herself before she walked straight into the thing she'd been walking towards to begin with. Sarah stood stock still and slowly raised her head. She found herself nose to nose with Jareth, the man who was the most extraordinary ornament in his own garden. For a brief moment, he seemed timeless.

His eyes narrowed as they met hers, and in response Sarah's eyes involuntarily widened. Silence pervaded the courtyard and a seemingly perfect breeze blew, sending a ripple through the grass and a gentle tousle through Sarah's dark hair. Sarah didn't look away. She kept reminding herself that this was her dream, after all. Even if she didn't cause this particular dream to happen, she was still in it, making it at least somewhat hers. Her eyes flickered back and forth between either one of his, reminding her of their discordiance. Sarah sighed and slightly pursed her lips.

"Well….aren't you going to say something?" She raised her eyebrows expectantly and waited, watching the Goblin King's face intently. His jaw seemed to clench for a moment, but still there was silence as he glared down at her. Sarah slowly dropped one of her brows to leave the other raised and took a step back.

"If you have nothing to say…I suppose I'll be on my way," she said. The bleeding roses behind Jareth continued to shed drops as Sarah scanned the courtyard for an exit and spotted a door ajar in the side of a spire that seemed to reach even above the high garden. She slowly turned towards the door and began to casually walk toward it. As her hand reached for the handle, it slammed shut with an unsettling bang. Sarah gasped in surprise and turned her head to shoot an angry look at the only person possibly responsible, only to find him five steps behind her, in the same pose as before. Sarah was beginning to lose her nerve. She had no memory of him ever remaining this silent for so long, or of looking so seriously as he did before her now, that she was unsure what to do with her only obvious avenue of escape cut off. Sarah backed against the door and tried pushing against it to no avail. It was solid, and she was feeling more and more like a cornered animal with no way out as she looked from side to side.

"The roses…" Jareth began.

Sarah's eyes seemed to audibly snap back in front of her when he spoke, the previous silence and events making her hang suddenly upon his every word.

"…do they fascinate you?" he finished, eyes still narrowed and intensely focused upon Sarah. Sarah frowned and relaxed almost imperceptibly.

"Only in as much as they bleed. I mean, they're bleeding flowers. When do you ever see something like that?" she rambled out all at once. Sarah thought she saw the corner of the King's mouth twitch up ever so slightly.

"Sarah…" he began, almost chidingly.

"Yes?" she responded quickly.

"You are running out of time," he said almost matter-of-factly, raising his head. His face relaxed some as a frown took over from his previous stony expression.

Sarah's eyes narrowed. "You said that last time. I don't understand what you mean. There's plenty of time. See?" she said, pointing up to the sun as it shone brightly overhead. Jareth shook his head and turned around easily, making his way to the rose bed. Sarah followed before she realized she was following- that was often the problem with dreams- and watched as Jareth knelt down to cup one of the roses in his hand. The blood continued to roll off the petals slowly and fell into his palm, before rolling and falling once more to the ground. Sarah found herself rather fixated upon the scene. She found it lovely and disturbing all at once.

"Do you know why these flowers seem to grow more beautiful every time you lay eyes upon them?" he said, interrupting her reverie.

"No," Sarah replied rather dumbly as she tried to pull her eyes away from the roses to look at Jareth.

"These roses are sewn with the blood of the plant that created their seeds. They will only grow and flourish in that selfsame blood that birthed them, and the story goes that with every passing moment, the mother plant's children cry tears of blood for its sacrifice to raise them up into the sun. The blood rolls down its petals, as you can see, and falls back down onto the earth to be absorbed back up through its roots, purified, and dispelled, all over again. With every purification of what it previously shed, the roses taken on a seemingly more magnificent sheen, its beauty always surpassing that which surpassed before."

Sarah's brows raised in a dazed surprise at the story as Jareth removed his hand from the rose. He continued to watch it seep and licked discretely at what remained on his hand.

"Wow," she said lamely, blinking a few times to try and come back to herself as she swore she saw the rose suddenly shimmer as it went through its changes.

"I'm not sure if 'wow' is the choicest of words, but it's suitable enough," he replied, and pulled a small knife from his jacket pocket. Sarah noticed the gleam of the metal long enough to rip her eyes away from the sight of the petals and look at Jareth who was slowly wiping the blade on his sleeve.

"There have been stories of men and women who have wasted away before one of these roses, abhorrent to miss a single moment of their perpetual transformation," he continued, and kneeled down upon the ground to lightly touch the one he had held before.

"They feel the rose to be some sort of eternal thing, yet mortal- lasting only so long as they look at it, but continuous since it would exist outside of their viewing. They develop an irrational attachment, as if the flower still living outside of their gaze, as it is meant to do, would make the plant something like a cheating lover to the people who would watch it. What they do not realize is…" Jareth paused, and pulled out the knife again. Taking it firmly in hand, he ripped down against the base of its stem in one quick jerking motion, severing it from the ground and its supply of blood. He stuck the knife into the ground just before the flower bed and rose to his feet, carrying the crimson flower, and turned to Sarah who stood open-mouthed in shock at the destruction of such an incredible plant.

"What they do not realize," Jareth began again, placing the rose gently into Sarah's two outstretched hands, "Is that continuously seeping and purifying over and over and over again isn't making the flower more beautiful…."

Suddenly the flower began to tremble in the palms of Sarah's hands, before inwardly imploding and liquifying all over her fingers. Sarah's natural reaction was to be thoroughly disgusted, and she was as she tried to get the gloopy flower guts to slide off of her hands and on to the ground without wiping them on herself.

"….The process is making them _hollow_. What one sees isn't the revelation of more and more beauty, but more and more into the rose itself- literally. When the roses are newly grown, they appear coarse and dull, like an ordinary rose, but it is then that they are their sturdiest. As they purify the blood that gives them such beauty, the trade-off is often their lives- they cannot survive even as a cutting after awhile. They are rooted. They cannot leave the bed without dying."

Jareth watched Sarah struggle with the remainder of the thick liquid on her hands and pulled a small handkerchief from his coat pocket and handed it to her. She took it gratefully and began to get the last of it off of her hands.

"There _is_ an upside to this tale, however," he began. "The upside is that, if well planned, the severed flower can be used to nurture its offspring and begin a new lifecycle. Even so, these flowers are rare for two reasons- one, that no one can ever usually bear cutting, or witnessing the cutting, of these roses they've invested so much time into staring at, and two, because people are rarely good at timing the cuts so as to not waste the blood of the mother plant," he said with a sly smile.

"Why can't they cut the flowers to make more if it means that they'd even get one of their own to look at forever?" Sarah asked, folding the soiled handkerchief. Jareth took it from her gingerly and tossed it nonchalantly at the base of the flower bed.

"Well, why do you think? What do you think of the roses now, knowing what you know and seeing what you've seen?" he asked.

Sarah frowned and turned her eyes once more to the eerily shifting roses. As she watched them, for some reason she could no longer immerse herself in their cycle as she did before.

"I don't understand…" she said, looking up curiously at Jareth.

Jareth grinned at her and picked up his knife and the handkerchief, now both miraculously clean, from the rose bed and put them away into a pocket.

"Knowledge does strange things to alter one's perception. I believe the humans have a saying- 'Ignorance is bliss' or some rubbish? Anyway, there's some truth to that, although it's not always the case by any means."

He stepped away from the roses and began to walk towards Sarah who found it easy to look away from the flowers and back to Jareth. "So…what's the point of telling me the story and showing me all that then?"

Jareth raised his brows. "Reason? Does there have to be a reason to share something interesting?"

Sarah frowned. "No, I suppose not. But you're not the type of person to give something away for free."

"That is true," Jareth agreed, moving to stand in front of her. "It's because the roses, their lives, are a metaphor."

"A metaphor for what?" she asked, becoming oddly suspicious of the Goblin king once more.

"A metaphor for a girl who experienced despair, who turned that despair into art, who turned the art into a crime, who challenged the crime for a trip through my Labyrinth, and who used my Labyrinth to survive and live a normal life until an egregious accident just days before the 26th year of her life rendered her yet another situation to mold but this time with the most daunting choice yet," he said without missing a beat, his eyes slowly narrowing anew. Sarah stood in stock still silence as she looked up at him and listened, unsure of how she should be reacting to what he was suggesting.

"Are you saying….." she began, swallowing slowly. "Are you saying that just because the clocks here, the clocks on that day, had twenty-six hours that just because my birthday also happens to be my twenty-sixth that I'm going to _die_?" she finished with something of a squeak.

Jareth shook his head and took a step towards her. He raised his arms and put his hands on her shoulders. "No," he said. "I'm saying that because of this accident, you are destined to die, but that because it falls on this number, out of all the numbers in the universe, that you have a unique opportunity to challenge destiny, just as you have everything else, and survive in spite of it."

Sarah's eyes began to water with tears as she looked up at Jareth. "How? What would it take to do that?" she said, almost pleadingly.

Jareth paused and took a breath. He looked around himself for a moment before looking back at Sarah who was fighting to hold back a storm of emotion at what she had just discovered and witnessed in such a short span of time.

"Sarah…" he began. "If you want to survive, you must take back what you said to me the last time we met. That day when you stood in the ruins of my castle and declared yourself my equal, that I had no sway over you. You must rescind that declaration. Only then do you stand a chance to–"

Sarah's face suddenly changed to anger as she stepped out of Jareth's reach and backed away from him. "No," she interrupted. "No, I can't do that."

Jareth stood there, arms outstretched where they were, before dropping them back down to his sides again. His face took on the dark, icy sheen it had when she first arrived in the courtyard as he raised his eyes to look at her, except this time his gaze was met with one of Sarah's own.

"You would prefer to die then?" he said quietly, his question coming out as more of a statement than a question.

"I would prefer to _live_," she said firmly.

"And saving your life by taking back an ill-said statement isn't living?" he said coldly, his brow twitching slightly.

"I've seen your world…what it can and cannot be…and there is no living there," she replied bitterly.

Jareth laughed softly once, then laughed softly again, before throwing his head back and laughing in earnest. Sarah watched this display with morbid fascination. If she weren't already concerned with saving herself, she might've been frightened by the strange display, the sudden shifts in mood, but she couldn't be bothered with that. She needed to find a way out, and a way to speak to the doctors again. He was wrong. She wasn't dying. Sure, it felt like death in all those casts and braces, but they were only temporary. It couldn't possibly be killing her, right?

Jareth composed himself and stood there smiling lopsidedly at Sarah before evening out his expression to something more amicable.

"Sarah, what will you do if you go back and the doctors tell you exactly what I have? That you're dying, irreversibly, and that there's nothing they can do? Will you still avoid me then? Come, you're a smart enough girl, no, a grown woman now, to see the smarter choice when it's presented in front of you. Death, or life?"

He seemed to be cajoling her, prodding her with a doom that seemed not only impossible to her but even vaguely cliché. Was this the best he could come up with? Sarah grinned, and her sudden change in expression seemed to throw Jareth off for a moment.

"The thought of accepting your offer, of handing myself over in surrender for all those years ago, even if it means I might live…..it sickens me," she said with a vicious smirk. All expression dropped from Jareth's face, the color draining from it, when she realized that it wasn't just his face that was losing color, but the grass, the roses, and the sky and sun as well.

Jareth jolted forward. "No! NO! Not yet! I'm not finished speaking with her yet!" he cried as light flooded Sarah's face, and as she opened her eyes, she was greeted with the familiar sight of nurses in blue scrubs hovering around her as she awoke.

"Glad to have you back with us, Miss Williams!" one of them said. "We'll have you back to your room soon!"

Sarah smiled, or tried to smile, as she stared up at the ceiling and began counting the tiles, thinking of nothing but the numbers as she tried to clear her head.

〜≠〜

When she arrived back in her hospital room, she was greeted by not only her father and step-mother, but this time her little brother Toby as well. They fawned over her almost instantaneously and it brought tears to Sarah's eyes. Her family seemed a wreck, her father appeared to have been crying, and Karen had remnants of black left over on her cheeks that she hadn't managed to wipe away well enough. They held her hand, Toby told Sarah a short story about how his classes had been, and soon the doctor was in the room with them. Silence.

Everything seemed to fall into a blurry haze to Sarah. The doctor had said that she had lapsed into a sudden attack that morning, that even her heart had stopped for awhile, and that they had deemed it necessary to put her into immediate surgery. They had found hemorrhaging in her brain, a slow leaking of blood that had been caused by the accident and was too small for them to see upon their first examinations. The doctor explained how this sort of thing was terminal. It was affecting Sarah's faculties. She could not survive it for much longer and there was nothing they could do due to its location. Suddenly Sarah heard weeping. She could'nt tell where it was coming from, but none the less she tried to comfort them, saying not to cry, that it would be alright, but even after saying that, she couldn't think of why she was saying it.

The room around her was spinning. She saw the colors of the walls merging with the colors of the people standing around her, of the people who came in and out, of the chairs and table, and of the tall plant in the corner. They all became daubs of color in what was increasingly a kaleidoscope vision. She didn't know why she was seeing these things, but it seemed pleasant enough. Suddenly the colors began to fade to drab, and she could feel herself reaching out, grasping, trying to hold on to even the blur of it all, when in the middle of the room stood a man with light blond hair and mismatched eyes. She knew him, but she wasn't thinking like she should be.

"Will you still die here, in spite of me?" he said. Sarah tried to answer him, but couldn't.

"Sarah Williams," the man declared. He stood in the middle of the haze as it slowly but surely began to die down no matter how hard she tried to hang onto it.

"Sarah Williams!" he said again. "Do you want to live?"

Sarah paused. Live? What could living possibly have to do with anything? She could feel that old darkness from before pulling at her, the swimming oblivion, and she smiled slightly as she remembered the freedom of it.

"Do you want to live to see another day?" he said, more insistently.

Her eyes snapped back to the figure, his face now contorted in a desperation that might've matched her own moments ago. She looked to her side and could make out the vague figure of another man somewhere beside her. Her father, yes, and her younger brother, too, and a step mother.

"Yes, remember them, Sarah. Hold onto them."

Sarah closed her eyes, and as she did, a flood of memories, of childhood, adolescence, and her new adulthood flowed through her, and she felt a tear fall down against her temple.

"Do you want to live to see another day, Sarah Williams?"

Sarah could smell the wet morning dew on the grass, the fur of her old dog, her childhood home, her current home. She raised a hand to wipe away the tears from her face and sighed. "Yes," she said softly. As she looked down at her ephemeral hand, her fingers were soaked with her tears, but there was something strange about it. Her tears were red.

"So be it," the man said, and, as he bowed his head, she was gone.

* * *

><p><strong>So we're finally getting into the good stuff! Please forgive the late update- I've had to unexpectedly begin moving house so things have been a bit hectic for me in the past couple weeks. Things have somewhat calmed down again, though, so hopefully I can get back to regular weekly updates. If things come up, you can always check my profile page for goings on with updates or lack thereof.<strong>

**Please leave a review and let me know what you thought of chapter three! Thanks again to my medical consultant Jinx1764! See everyone at chapter 4!**

**~KS**


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